Job Hunt: Infinity

Chickering is where many student affairs development theory classes and conversation start. I think of it as the foundational theory of where we started to really look at how college students develop. It provided a framework to think about the changes students experienced and how we can use that framework as professionals. Chickering believed that going through identity development is the main type of development during young adulthood, which is when (at the time) most white men attended college. The vectors are based in Erikson's theory. The seven vectors include: Developing Competence, Managing Emotions, Moving Through Autonomy, Developing Mature Interpersonal Relationships, Establishing Identity, Developing Purpose, and Developing Integrity. Students go through the stages sequentially, starting with developing competencies, such as intellectually and interpersonally, learning to create a positive self identity, creating clear purpose and commitments, and then to developing a “pe...

As student affairs enters our annual Month of Recognition , and we share all of the Warm and Fuzzies of the jobs we do, we should also recognize the knowledge we need to function as competent professionals. Our jobs aren’t just fun and games - we’re also often trained in development, risk and crisis management, and mental health awareness. We should be doing more this month than trying to recruit people and tell everyone how wonderful our jobs are - and how they can just remain in college the rest of their lives. Over the next month, I, along with a few friends (hopefully), will go over psychosocial, cognitive development, racial identity development, sexual identity development, engagement, and success theories. This isn’t going to be an exhaustive list, and I had to make choices, right or wrong, of what to include. I’m hoping to hit the main ones that most of us reviewed in grad school, along with some we may have forgotten. As a side goal, I wanted to make sure I had a wide scope...

Today I attended and presented at a conference. One you probably haven't heard of. It ran from 9am-around 3:15. It included 3 sets of sessions, an opening key note, and lunch. The sessions offered a pretty wide variety of topics. The main theme (note: not  a theme to which adhere, but which the entire conference was focused on) was leadership education, meaning those working with student leaders. The conference attendance was small compared to big NASPA, less than 100 people.

My goal for this blog in 2017 was to post at least weekly, work got complicated and when I returned home at night I didn't have much energy to think or reflect or write. Starting Wednesday, February 8th until February 11th, I was at the NASPA Symposium on Military-Connected Students.

I really like the people I work with. My entire department is friendly, respectful, collegial, and amazing. The faculty members I work with are brilliant. They balance research and teaching. The advisors I work with work hard to keep up to date with their students, providing exceptional customer service. I am really good at my job. I support 15 faculty members, 2 professional academic advisors, 2 other staff members, about 500 undergraduate students, and 60 graduate students. I build class schedules, support faculty, create and support events, process all graduate student paperwork, admissions documents, and graduation documents, and I do most of it with a smile. This week has been filled with planning multiple faculty interviews along with getting ready for orientation and planning guest speakers. Yep! It's all going on at once. And today, shit hit the fan. Actually, it's been most of the week (yes, it's only Wednesday). I also have a lot going on personally. In one ...

Sphere of Influence I have trouble staying within my sphere of influence. It took me a very long time to realize I can only control my behavior (I really blame Daring Greatly for that one). My job is small, my actions, however, are not inconsequential. My actions affect my office suite, colleagues, and students. Being grumpy, unforthcoming, or rude doesn’t serve anyone. I can control my behavior, how I react to things, how I think about them, how I implement suggestions, and how my office operates. I can’t control much else. And that’s ok. Really. It is. Be a positive force in the universe, and others will appreciate you and want to work with you. That’s how you expand your sphere of influence. Values Say you believe that all gifts should be wrapped in shiny blue wrapping paper. You truly believe this. You act on it consistently, you’ve shared these beliefs, and you will continue with them. Some may say you value shiny blue wrapping paper. Your employer, however, may believe ...

I am not in student affairs. I have never worked professionally in student affairs. I have no experience on my resume in the student affairs category. I don’t know if I’ll ever work in student affairs. So, why, you may ask, am I posting about Careers in Student Affairs Month? It’s a great question. A wonderful one, really. Sometimes I ask myself about why I call myself a student affairs professional often, sometimes multiple times a day, sometimes all the time. Sometimes I have other things on my mind and I don’t think about student affairs at all. I think about student success. I think about that more than student affairs. I think about how we define student success, how we encourage success, how we measure success, how important success is, the milestones of success, and the headlines about success. I think about silos, too. I think about how we silo people so that they can’t share resources, goals, or expectations. I think about how those silos affect our work with students, and eac...

My last tweet was April 29th. Well, the last one you probably saw, because I did respond to one person who tweets mainly about baseball and hockey. He's also our local Single A baseball team radio announcer, you likely don't follow him. Anyway. I took part in a conversation that I found really interesting. It was also full of assumptions. So, I did what I did in grad school: I challenged those assumptions. I treat Twitter like a giant grad school class. I respect you as a person, I probably follow you for a reason or follow a conversation for a reason, and if you're participating it's probably also for a reason. So, if I disagree with someone in a conversation, it's likely that I don't actually disagree with the person. I probably disagree with their opinion/answer/tweet. I might even agree with whatever was said, but I'm trying to poke holes into it so I can learn more about it. I like to consider things in their entirety, and I believe that your idea...

I have a jumble of thoughts inspired by a few different conversations on Twitter the past few days. They're a loosely linked, so I figured it would be easiest to just get it all down in one post. Let's see if anyone can follow this mess... Opinions Twitter is a place where we share opinions. Sometimes they're part of a larger, planned discussion. Sometimes one person's thought(s) can cause a flurry of ideas and conversation. We share a lot of opinions. Some people share opinions as if they're facts or as if their experience is the only experience. Anything else is wrong or nonexistent. X is the only way to find a job. Y is the only way I can do Z to be authentic to myself. Going through A and B is the only path to take. My problem with these: everyone's path or story is true to them. We can't devalue someone's path because it's different. My favorite ones have to do with valuing our knowledge and skills: If you don't identify with X, you...

There are several training programs in the country that help faculty and staff understand student veterans. One is Green Zone Training offered by The University of North Carolina and another is the Veterans Educator Training and Support (V.E.T.S.) Program at the University of Colorado. The one I’m going to review is the VET NET Ally program (Thomas, 2010). The VET NET Ally Program was created for California State University, Long Beavh in order to fulfill the need for a safe space for veterans and is modeled after the Safe Zone Ally training program (Thomas, 2010). It offers four hours of training for faculty and staff and includes a panel of student veterans (Thomas, 2010). There are four theme areas: program purpose, policies and procedures, military and post-military culture and transition, and personal identity issues (Thomas, 2010). Similar to Safe Zone training, participants are given a decal for displaying in offices or workspaces (Thomas, 2010). “[T]he primary goals of t...

I haven't written in a while, and I'm not sure why. Back in September I read a great blog post by Lee Skallerup  on why she hasn't been blogging at the same rate as before. I agree with many of her points: I'm still learning a new position, I'm not as angry or frustrated any more, and I'm generally content with my new job. I still have a lot of thoughts about higher ed, and I think there are some great things out there in the higher ed and student affairs world. I'm just tired of the noise of the mainstream higher ed world. I haven't visited Inside Higher Ed in weeks (with the exception of finding Lee's post). I haven't been to the Chronicle longer than that. One of the reasons is that I'm bored. I'm bored with the focus on professors. Of them being "over worked" and "under worked" and the "horrors" of the tenure track and the public beatings of adjuncts. I'm tired of the bickering, of research vs teac...